...of friendship and love, of power and pettiness!
Roses in the Tempest: A Tale of Tudor England by Jeri Westerson Jeri Westerson does it again! Another wonderful piece of writing. A novel that looks at the other side of Henry VIII's destruction of places of religion, the pettiness and politics involved. The real hardship for those religious folks who had been cloistered for many years and then torn from all they knew and forced back into a society that they had been apart from for so long. Partly also a love story, of love known too late. A story of women as bargaining chips in the building of power and political alliances, and of enduring friendship. Isabella Launder is a woman of courage with a will of steel, daughter of a local yeoman farmer. Sir Thomas Gifford is at first the arrogant courtier who is her friend, then a would be lover, would be husband, and lastly a long term supporter and friend. I had little idea that some nunneries were so small. This one contained only four women and their servants an...